a sustainable-oriented technology - agtil

were the 15% of the sample with the highest scores on technology innovativeness, “low performers”
were those 15% who had the lowest scores, and the remaining companies were grouped into
the “middle performers” class. In the following exemplary analysis the results of the pilot study are
shown. In particular, sustainable aspects of TD are focused and their impact on the success of suppliers
is analyzed.
4 FINDINGS - STUDY 1
Our exploratory analysis revealed four key findings. First we recognized the importance of the
strategic orientation of innovation and development activities to the company`s vision and business
objectives.Second, a certain structuring of idea management is considered critical to success, as a
way to identify those ideas which display a good strategic fit and potential.Third, it was generally
observed that there had been a predominance of process-oriented TD. Forth, a process-related planning
and implementation of commercial activities was underrepresented, instead an "intuitive approach"
was dominant. These four key points are detailed below.
• Strategic Planning: In conjunction with the reevaluation and reorientation of the innovation
strategy an annual or semi-annual strategy meeting is anchored in most companies surveyed.
Consistent with the literature the planning activities of the large companies are broader than
those of the medium-sized companies. This can be seen from the ways in which information is
gathered and, in particular, prepared and the strategic planning instruments, such as technology
and innovation portfolios, scenario techniques, technology issue analysis, etc. However, medium
sized companies also carry out strategic situational analysis by using analyzing tools like
SWOT analyses, trend analyses and competitive analyses, although to a lesser extent than the
large firms surveyed. In the view of the interviewees these top-down activities are important, to
take into account a strategy focused generation of ideas.
• Idea Management: It was generally observed that innovative suppliers work not only with internal
but particularly with a wide range of external sources of information and ideas. Consistent
with Cooper`s research results, qualitative criteria are employed at the beginning of TD
projects to evaluate technology ideas in interdisciplinary teams. Checklists, which enable a systematic
approach to idea evaluation, were primarily used as assessment tools. In contrast, decision
matrices and purely verbal assessments of technology ideas were seldom used. Differences
in assessment also became visible by the numbers of assessment levels, which are undertaken,
before ideas were turned into concrete development projects. The empirical research indicates
that a two-step evaluation procedure is most popular, where the technology ideas are first assessed
by an interdisciplinary team (prioritization), and those ideas that pass the first step are
further assessed by the management that makes a selection decision (choice).
• Technology Development: According to the research results, it has become evident that a systematic
planning and implementation of development activities is of major importance for both
the reduction in development time and speed up rapid pace of the introductory phase. The findings
show that the logic of the Stage-Gate process with fuzzy gates (Cooper 2007) dominates in
order to systematize the development activities (n=8). However, three companies surveyed use
classical project structure plans for project planning and control, which are similar to Stage-
Gate processes again. As a result of the specific characteristics of enterprises the structure of
the TD processes provides varied differences. Firstly these distinctions relate to the number of
process stages, which range from 3 to 13 phases and secondly, they are based on whether a dif-